Claire (senior Brittany Matava) and the "limping man" (junior Davd Santare) comedically argue in JHUT's Fuddy Meers.

Confusion is charming in JHUT's Fuddy Meers

By: Christina Warner

Posted: 12/4/08

It will take until the third scene for you to even begin to comprehend the title. And it will take you even longer, possibly until the final scene, to understand the twisted plot. Nevertheless, Johns Hopkins University Theatre's newest play, Fuddy Meers, provides viewers with a story that is at once captivating and confusing.

The opening scene begins with Claire (senior Brittany Matava) awakening in a bed clad with Pottery Barn sheets. But don't be fooled. The plot is not all pastels and stripes.

The first hint that Fuddy Meers is not something straight from a Good Housekeeping magazine occurs when Claire's husband, Richard (sophomore Pierce Delahunt), arrives on the scene. Quickly, the audience learns that Claire suffers from something described as "psychogenic amnesia" and as of two years prior, Claire has woken up every morning with no memory.

However, Fuddy Meers is not simply the theatrical version of Adam Sandler's 50 First Dates either. This becomes quite obvious when junior David Santare frantically arrives in Claire's room. Face covered with a ski mask and half a manacle on his wrist, Santare's character is merely listed as "limping man" in the playbill. This is probably because the more accurate description of a "limping, half blind, half deaf man with a lisp" would have taken up too much space.

Although the opening scenes are comedically scripted and acted, it is the moments that sophomore Robert Powers is on stage that are the most hilarious. Powers plays Claire's son, Kenny, a pot-smoking teenager who spouts the play's most vulgar yet comedic lines. And although he fully embodies an angst-ridden adolescent who should be at least halfway through high school, Kenny is still floundering through eighth grade. Richard attributes this to Kenny's dyslexia.

Claire quickly decides to leave with the masked man once he tells her that he is her brother, Zach. Amidst Zach's many insistences that Claire is not safe with Richard, the two make their way to her mother's house.

Claire's mother, Gertie (senior Christen Cromwell), has just recently recovered from a stroke and now can speak only in "stroke talk," an incoherent babble comprised of jumbling the beginnings and endings of words. Cromwell's exuberant hand gestures and mixed-up dialogue are so excellently delivered that, although Gertie does not speak in an intelligible tongue, the audience can understand everything she says.

The only aspect that is slightly off-putting is the relationship between Gertie and Claire. Cromwell's ability to scream at high-pitched decibels occasionally makes her appear to be playing the younger of the two roles. Nonetheless, it is amusing to see Gertie, a grandmother-aged character, dancing around the stage like a two-year-old.

When Millet (junior Jeremy Garson) appears on stage, it is his puppet-covered hand that the audience sees first. Millet himself is a mild-mannered, meek man who suspiciously wears the other half of Zach's manacle. His puppet, however, is a foul-mouthed character with an innate ability to slip topics such as sodomy into ordinary conversation.

With the introduction of Heidi (junior Luska Khalapyan), the plot begins its sharp turn towards answering many of the play's questions. Khalapyan plays the sort of cop who seems over-eager to make arrests and would pull over a car for going five miles over the speed limit. Unfortunately for Richard and Kenny, who are in the process of driving to Gertie's house, they have succumbed to the "siren call of ganja" and have just lit up when she pulls them over.

A seemingly random chain of events brings all the characters to Gertie's house, where the remainder of the play takes place. Act one ends with a scene that showcases the cast's talents. It appears that when chase scenes, violence and arguments are combined, the actors are at their best. This final scene of act one is excellently staged and ends with a bang (but that might have just been someone getting hit in the head with a cookie tin).

Act two, although shorter, is packed with answers to the questions posed in the first half. For instance, the seemingly innocuous, eerie fun house music that plays during set changes proves to be important. Unfortunately, questions like "Why is there a safety pin hanging off the sleeve of Kenny's shirt?" were never answered. But maybe that's a question that should be directed to the costume designer.

Fuddy Meers started out like a cheesy sitcom. Thankfully, it didn't stay that way. As the plot progressed, so did the enthusiasm of the actors. Scenes that heightened the actors' adrenaline also increased the believability of their character portrayals. Although Powers was unquestionably the funniest of the cast, each character had a fair share of punch lines. The plot itself is intriguing but it is the actors' comedic delivery that makes Fuddy Meers a play worth seeing.